On: Writing a Book with Unix

[_emacsomancer_]

> There is a reason LaTeX is barely used out of academia.

That's simply untrue. Look at any serious programming books. And LaTeX is used as the back-end for quite a number of text-processing tools.

[pjmlp → _emacsomancer_]

Those written by academics, published by academic related editors, in old style layouts, black and white.

Professional publishing has long ago switched to DTP tooling, able to handle layouts and colouring in modern presses.

[_emacsomancer_ → pjmlp]

That's not a change. 'Professional' publishing has long used (inferior) DTP solutions.

[pjmlp → _emacsomancer_]

Where is the LaTeX superior color management solution for typography press?

[_emacsomancer_ → pjmlp]

Great, you've got colour management with lousy type-setting!

[pjmlp → _emacsomancer_]

Yep,better tell to the professional book editors the big mistake they are making in their high profile printing.

[_emacsomancer_ → pjmlp]

I've used DTP tools before too (though it's been a number of a years), so I'm not unfamiliar with the differences.

To be fair, the use cases are rather different. Regular fiction books are not so complicated in terms of layout. Magazines are generally involve much more complicated layouts - where there are questions of getting colours right, having text wrap, and so on.

But for technical work, it's insane to use anything not TeX-based (e.g. Scribble), even if you don't use TeX directly.